# Tom Luckey

Thomas Walker Luckey (January 6, 1940 – August 19, 2012) was an American architect and sculptor, best known for inventing abstract playgrounds called Luckey Climbers. Luckey also created furniture, merry-go-rounds, and interiors.

## Life and career

After graduating from the Yale School of Architecture in the late 1960s, Luckey began remodeling friends' houses and doing experimental projects, including one described as transforming:
   ... part of a Vermont house into a "spooky space landscape," as one critic described it. Randomly placed steps, ramps, and terraces ascended to the ceiling, and surfaces were sheathed in woolly orange carpet. Elsewhere in the house, a cylindrical rotating room replicated the spatial transmutations of LSD with a bed that became the back of a sofa, a table that morphed into a seating platform that became a desk, and so on.
In addition to interiors and furniture, he also designed merry-go-rounds; one, inspired by square dances, moves riders from one seat to another as they go around.
A mutual friend introduced Luckey to Agnes Gund, who insisted he contact the Boston Children's Museum. After he persuaded officials to let him build his first Luckey Climber, the structure turned out to be one of the museum's most popular exhibits, and has now been replaced with a new version.
In 2005, Luckey fell out of a second-story bathroom window and landed on his head. He fractured his cervical vertebra and was paralyzed from the neck down.
Luckey died on August 19, 2012, at Yale–New Haven Hospital due to complications from pneumonia. He was 72.

### Luckey Climbers

Luckey Climbers are multi-story climbing structures crossed with mazes and jungle gyms. In appearance, they have been compared to "a Calder mobile fashioned from Monet's lily pads". They have been installed in locations across North America that include:
   | Venue | Location |
   | Boston Children's Museum | Boston, Massachusetts |
   | Children's Museum of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
   | Young at Art Museum | Davie, Florida |
   | Papalote museo del niño (Papalote Children's Museum) | Mexico City, Mexico |
   | Children's Discovery Museum | Normal, Illinois |
   | Children's Museum of Winston-Salem | Winston-Salem, North Carolina |
   | Westfield Fox Valley | Aurora, Illinois |
   | Lincoln Park Zoo | Chicago, Illinois |
   | WonderLab | Bloomington, Indiana |
   | Long Island Children's Museum | Garden City, New York |
   | Children's Museum at Holyoke | Holyoke, Massachusetts |
   | Children's Museum of Memphis | Memphis, Tennessee |
   | The Commons | Columbus, Indiana |
   | Children's Museum of Alamance County | Graham, North Carolina |
   | Westfield Century City | Los Angeles, California |
   | Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum | Reno, Nevada |
   | Children's Museum of South Dakota | Brookings, South Dakota |
   | Providence Children's Museum | Providence, Rhode Island |
   | Delaware Children's Museum | Wilmington, Delaware |
   | Children's Museum of the Upstate | Greenville, South Carolina |
   | Children's Museum of Houston | Houston, Texas |
   | The Magic House | Kirkwood, Missouri |
   | Kidspace Children's Museum | Pasadena, California |
   | Discovery Place | Charlotte, North Carolina |
   | Christ Community Church | St. Charles, Illinois |

## Luckey (documentary)

Filmmaker Laura Longsworth made a 2008 documentary, Luckey. The film appeared at a number of festivals, including SxSW and the Independent Film Festival of Boston, and garnered the Special Jury Award for Artistic Portrait at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival and Best Documentary Feature at the Indie Memphis Film Festival. The film has also been shown on the Sundance Channel.